1. (Field of the Invention)
The present invention relates to a redox electric element, such as a rectifier element or a transistor element , used in the field of integrated circuits, which element is implemented in hyperfine size (of several 10 to several 100 .ANG.) in biomolecular level by using oxidation-reduction substances as material thereof, thereby attaining a high-speed integrated circuit of high density.
2. (Prior Art)
Heretofore, rectifier elements in metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) structure as shown in FIG. 1, for example, as described in an article by Yoshihisa Yanai and Yuzuru Nagata, entitled "INTEGRATED CIRCUIT ENGINEERING" (1) have been employed in conventional integrated circuits. In FIG. 1, the reference numeral 11 designates a p-type silicon substrate, the reference numeral 12 designates an n-type region, the reference numeral 13 designates a p-type region, the reference numeral 14 designates an n-type region, the reference numeral 15 designates SiO.sub.2 films, and each of the reference numerals 16 and 17 designates an electrode. As shown in FIG. 1, a p-n junction is formed between the electrodes 16 and 17 by the junction of the p-type region 13 and the n-type region 14, thereby attaining rectifying characteristics.
The conventional rectifier elements in the MOS structure can be hyperfinely processed, so that LSIs of 1 M bits employing the rectifier elements in the aforementioned structure or transistor elements in similar structure thereto are now put into practice.
In order to improve such elements in storage capacity and arithmetic speed, the elements themselves must indispensably be in hyperfine structure, whereas mean free paths of electrons are substantially equalized to scales of the elements in hyperfine patterns of about 0.2 .mu.m in elements using Si and hence the independency of the elements cannot be maintained. Thus, it is anticipated that maturing silicon technology may run into a blank wall in the view of hyperfine structure in the near feature, and hence required is an electric circuit element based on a new principle which can crack the 0.2 .mu.m barrier.
On the other hand, a plurality of types of biogenic proteins (hereinafter referred to as electron transport proteins) having electron transport functions for carrying electrons in predetermined directions are present in vibo. For example, the electron transport biogenic proteins are embedded in biomembranes in regular orientation, to be in a specific intermolecular arrangement so that electron transport is caused between biomolecules.
The electron transport biogenic proteins show oxidation-reduction (redox) reaction in electron transport in vibo and are capable of making electrons flow from negative redox potential levels of the respective electron transport biogenic proteins to positive redox potential levels. Hence it may be considered that the movement of the electrons can be controlled in molecular level by utilizing such properties of the electron transport proteins. By employing the properties of the electron transport biogenic proteins in vibo, an electronic device has been recently proposed, however, has not yet performed hyperfine structure in size, and not yet attained sufficient rectifying and transistor characteristics.